Newspaper to resume publishing after five months of censorship

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(MFWA/IFEX) - 6 April 2011 - The privately-owned "Standard" newspaper, which was banned in 2010 by the Gambian authorities, has been given the green-light to resume operations. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources reported that the decision was announced by the newly appointed State House Press Secretary, Fatou Camara, during a rare interaction between President Yahya Jammeh and media owners and editors in the country. President Jammeh chastised the private media during the meeting warning that: "If I am to kill 10,000 lives to save millions of lives, I will do so".

The sources said that following the lifting of the ban, Sheriff Bojang Sr., the editor of the monthly "Standard", announced that the newspaper would reappear on newsstands on 1 April. However, the sources said the newspaper did not appear as announced.

In October 2001, personnel of the notorious National intelligence Agency (NIA), acting on the orders of President Jammeh, suspended the newspaper after it published its second issue.

The "Standard"'s inaugural issue in August 2010 ran an article about former President Dawda Kairaba Jawara based on information from a book written by the editor. The book entitled "Kairaba", which means "Big Peace" in the Mandinka language, is about President Jammeh's coup d'état in 1994.

At the time of the ban, Bojang was interrogated by NIA officials and made to report two to three times weekly to the NIA offices in the course of one month. During the interrogations, Bojang was questioned about the newspaper's source of funding.

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This "LGBT Censorship in Lebanon" report tackles the impact of censorship, unequal treatment and the arbitrariness of legislation on the daily lives of the Lebanese LGBT Community and more generally all LGBT-related content in Lebanon.

In this report we take a closer look on how a traditionally safe space for free speech and expression was transformed into a space of unregulated arbitrary legal practices. We also examine the effect that the ever-changing political objectives, affiliations and temporal objectives all have on the frequency and severity of online political censorship cases.

Combining both violent and nonviolent methods, the Communist Party's policies are designed to curb the rapid growth of religious communities and eliminate certain beliefs and practices, while also harnessing aspects of religion that could serve the regime's political and economic interests.

Many journalists increasingly practice self-censorship, fearing retribution from security forces, military intelligence, and militant groups. Media outlets in 2016 remained under pressure to avoid reporting on or criticising human rights violations in counterterrorism operations. The Taliban and other armed groups threatened media outlets and targeted journalists and activists for their work.

After already cracking down on freedom of information in recent years, President Erdoğan has taken advantage of the abortive coup d’état and the state of emergency in effect since 20 July to silence many more of his media critics, not only Gülen movement media and journalists but also, to a lesser extent, Kurdish, secularist and left-wing media.

This publication presents the findings of the media development assessment in Mongolia that began in 2012 to determine the state of the media in the country. The assessment was based on the UNESCO/IPDC Media Development Indicators (MDIs), an internationally recognized analytical tool used to provide detailed overviews of national media landscapes and related media development priorities.

Violence against journalists in Europe increased in the second quarter of 2016, reports submitted to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform show, as a government crackdown in Turkey intensified and protests turned violent in countries from France to Finland.

“After the initial optimism during the Euromaidan movement, many journalists have become disillusioned. They are faced with the triple challenge of the war in the Eastern part of the country, the economic crisis and the digitalization of mass media.”

An officer of the Myanmar army recently filed a criminal complaint against two journalists for allegedly sowing disunity among the military. Even though mediation by the Press Council caused the military to withdraw the case, this incident demonstrates how the military continues to throw its weight to get back at what it perceives as negative publicity.

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The report is a frank assessment of the recent regime of online censorship and mass surveillance against a backdrop of longstanding, serious abuses of the judicial process and attacks on freedom of expression by Turkish authorities.

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Despite its Constitutional commitment to free speech, India’s legal system makes it surprisingly easy to silence others. Routine corruption, inefficiency, and the selective enforcement of vague and overbroad laws allow individuals, or small groups, to censor opinions they find distasteful. - See more at: http://www.pen-international.org/the-india-report-executive-summary-and-key-findings/#sthash.TIIM2xbu.dpuf

As Globe International Center (GIC) reported, from 2012-2014, violations against journalists and the media increased compared to previous years and journalists faced external threats and intervention in their professional work, different types of pressures, threats, censorship in distribution, demands to reveal their information sources, to question and give testimony in mass by law enforcement bodies, especially by the General Intelligence Agency, use of criminal defamation law by politicians and public bodies or public officials censoring the media.

As the election looms for later this year, incidents in 2014 and in early 2015 involving the press raises serious questions on the genuineness of media freedom in Burma. The situation is alarming as the state seems to have heaped all the faults and fines on the media in the past year, which has seen a media worker being killed in October on the pretext of national security. International assistance has poured into the country to develop the media aimed at lifting and sustaining the state of media freedom. However, a viable press freedom environment seems unlikely to materialise in Burma before the end of this administration.

The media in Tripura is still dependent on the government for financial help, giving them an unprecedented upper hand to control press freedom in the state. As long as the political party in power is satisfied, the media is deemed to be okay otherwise there is an incredible pressure on the journalists as they have to not only endure insults but also face demotion in rank as well as being refused accreditation. - See more at: https://samsn.ifj.org/media-in-north-eastern-state-of-tripura/#sthash.0GypROMb.dpuf

There are far too many countries where news and content providers constantly face a very special and formidable form of censorship, one exercised in the name of religion or even God. And with increasing frequency, this desire to thwart freedom of information invokes the hard-to-define and very subjective concept of the "feelings of believers."

From August 28 to October 15, 2014, PEN American Center carried out an international survey of writers1 , to investigate how government surveillance influences their thinking, research, and writing, as well as their views of government surveillance by the U.S. and its impact around the world.

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